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All Ages, Art Lessons and Workshops

Art Lessons, Workshops, and Apprenticeships for All Ages

Join us for art adventures after school, on weekends, or on school holidays!

We offer both classical and experimental projects such as:Coloring Sound: Paint to music, score a picture to perform!Live Model: Draw in the garden labyrinth or on the stageStill Life: Etch fresh flowers or Landscapes from photos onto platesClay and PlasterCoaching for artists’ portfoliosStaff Development for school teachersMontessori ArtSprouts: This class, for3-5yr-olds, is also for caretakers.
Drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture in a real art studio with professional materials included, you can have one-on-one or small group instruction or an Apprenticeship with distinguished artists in a variety of disciplines.

Come register for a class, apply to volunteer or serve on the ArtSeed Youth Council.

ArtSeed’s Labyrinth Studios are in Rooms 5-B & 5-C on the second floor,Park Presidio United Methodist Church on4301 Geary Boulevard at 7th Avenuein the Richmond District of San Francisco.

Find out more: drop in on Sundays from 1-3 p.m.
or call Josefa at 415-656-9849.

Tuition is on a sliding scale and first-come-first-serve basis. Scholarships are available. No one is turned away for lack of funds!

Josefa Vaughan, ArtSeed Founder believes that mistakes can be friends! She has practiced her teaching philosophy and exhibited her art in the U.S. and abroad since 1989.

Fee Schedule:$50/hour, or bring a friend to split the cost ($25/hour for each). $150 for one daylong workshop of eight hours ($75/day if you bring a friend to split the cost). $500 in advance for twelve two hour lessons after school or on the weekends ($20 per hour).

“During ArtSeed’s Summer Intensive, I noticed lots of laughter. I was an independent, serious girl, but when I started knowing other people better, I became more playful and kind. ArtSeed changed my personality.” – Paola, student, Summer Intensives 2014, 2015 and 2016

Paola with her new ArtSeed friends, Louisse and Kimberly.

This year’s theme and title of ArtSeed’s final exhibition was “Cottage Industry 2016: Locomotion, Collaboration, Let’s Beat Poverty and Racism In All Their Forms!” With its sense of urgency it produced the most activity ever. Never has our final body of work been more precise and yet expansive in its rendering of our chosen topics: Locomotion, Collaboration, Poverty, and Racism.

Presidio School field trip to see their Thoreau exhibition.

Our projects included weekly classes at Presidio Early Education School, Tule Elk Park Early Education School, San Francisco Public Montessori School, and Saint Brigid School. Lowell High School’s music department hosted two lectures by composer Charles Boone. Together that made four SF Unified District Schools and one parochial school. More than two hundred and fifty students were served. Eleven classroom teachers and fifteen paraprofessionals were involved. Ten ArtSeed Teaching Artists were employed.

Pre-k students explored different methods of drawing. They experienced how “fast lines” tend to go straight unless they are gestures made to capture the movement of a figure or atmosphere in a picture. In one exercise, they were told to draw faces, objects, or imaginary things using meandering lines, all this while actually not looking at what they were doing. The results were illuminating altogether. What they saw in their heads or with their eyes sometimes looked, on the paper, just like what they had been asked to imagine: trails a tiny bug might be making as he moved about on the object being drawn. In another project, the youngsters worked with, and on, postcards, some over one hundred years old. It was a lesson in the appreciation of things very different from today’s electronic communications: tangible, tactile things with hand-written words that had been carried long ago by a postman from a person in one place, to another person far away.

We learned that faces are not round but egg-shaped and that landscapes love a horizontal format but claim a vertical thrust with mountains, volcanoes, and trees. These three and four-year olds learned to etch images into Styrofoam or produce them with stencils to make prints so that one drawing can produce lots of cards to give away to family and friends.

Styrofoam prints by pre-k students at Tule Elk Park Early Education School

Some of our older students at the San Francisco Public Montessori School made paintings inspired by stories of fugitive slaves’ nighttime travels through landscapes guided only by the stars in the sky. Saint Brigid students painted live models with acrylics on canvas and also painted their own stories of everyday action figures using oils on large hand-made paper. During ArtSeed’s ten-hour, 2016 Art-a-thon, these are just some of the kinds of materials and ideas that were put to use by the large number of participants who came to make art while listening to live music and munching healthy foods at the Thoreau Center for Sustainability.

“During my time as an ArtSeed student, I learned that a mistake can turn into something beautiful. When I painted with watercolors I noticed that most of the time it doesn’t turn out as you want. All you need to do is just help the colors move together. Like in life, things don’t always turn out as you might hope, but they can end up being something unexpected that you will learn to love.”- Kimberly, student, Summer Intensive 2014 and 2016

The Gavrich Family / Tony and Caroline Grant

This year’s ArtSeed projects are supported in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. While we are very grateful for the generous donations from our major donors, listed above, ArtSeed is also supported in large part by the individual gifts and volunteer time from friends like you. Modest gifts continue to be our base of support and are essential to our success. Thank you! Click to see a full list of sponsors and in-kind donors (and please do call us if you see that any names are missing).

ArtSeed’s mission is to connect the most resourceful and gifted with the youngest and most vulnerable citizens of the Bay Area and beyond through projects that explore links between classical and cutting-edge fine arts disciplines. We do not discriminate on the basis of disability, race, color, creed, sexual orientation, political party, economic background, national, or ethnic origin.

Latest Photos on Flickr

ArtSeed is supported in large part by individual gifts of all sizes and by gifts of time and expertise from friends. We are immensely grateful for recent generous donations from the Sam Mazza Foundation, The Cervin & Gavrich Family, Tony & Caroline Grant and Rebecca & Sergio Maggi. Thank you all very much! Click to see a full list of sponsors and in-kind donors. Please call us if you see updates and corrections that are needed.

ArtSeed’s mission is to connect the most resourceful and gifted with the youngest and most vulnerable citizens of the Bay Area and beyond through projects that explore links between classical and cutting-edge fine arts disciplines. We do not discriminate on the basis of disability, race, color, creed, sexual orientation, political party, economic background, national citizenship, religion or ethnic origin.